I'm on a train taking the red-eye to Paris and then on to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. It's a day and a half or a day plus one night of crossing Europe. And I love crossing Europe by train. It's just such a great way to start a journey because you see the landscape passing by and it's just a very ambient way to travel.
And so I have a lot of time to think and of course I'm thinking, alright, why are you going on a third Camino? You've done two. Isn't that enough? What is a third Camino going to do for you? It seems a little too much, maybe? I'm trying to be devil's advocate here. But to me it's a great example of how memory plays games with you. Memory is always an interpretation of what actually happened. It is rarely, if ever, objective. And the further away something is, the more the glasses of retrospection become rosy. It's just what our brains do. We forget the hard things, the unpleasant things, we tune them out and we remember the nice things, mostly.
And because I have this great sense of anticipation for my next Camino, for my third Camino - and I know that the Camino is a master of confounding your expectations. I'm super excited to be going. Don't get me wrong. I've been thinking about this for months on end. I've been making my little movies. I've been dreaming of the Camino and it has just kind of become a big part of my life. So in order to temper my expectations, I'm trying to think of all the things that make the Camino quite annoying. The Camino is great, but in retrospective, we tend to gloss over the hard things, the not so fun things.
I managed a hint of a smile, but I was cold, and wet.
Do I really remember what it was like when they cold went straight into my bones? No. Or that one guy that was snoring for the entire night, keeping everyone awake. Yeah, I remember him, but does he keep me from sleeping today? No. Or that lone stale croissant when I was starving. And all they had was this croissant that was maybe three days old. But that's barely a figment of my recollection. That really bad blister. It really hurt. But it's now only a funny anecdote, but not actual pain. The plastic, squeezy mattress in that albergue. Yes, it was uncomfortable, it didn't feel good. But I forgot about it. That long day in the Meseta, when the road would just not end, and I was running low on water. Now it's just part of the heroic tale that I can tell. But as it happened, it was pretty rough.
Or take the permanently rolling need to organize bookings for beds: You feel like Sisyphus, because every day you're on booking.com, trying to find a place to sleep. So you're on your phone again, and you don't want to be on your phone, and yet: you have to. But in retrospect, it seems like cool: "I was able to organize a bed for every night!" You're always so hungry, and yet the humdrum cuisine, the 'meat with something next to it' school of cooking. To be honest, it was rarely great. But it has long ago left my taste buds. The permanent exhaustion. Exhaustion. Your body just feels exhausted for days, for weeks. Do I physically remember that? I don't know. It just feels like, "yeah, I used my body, but does it feel bad now? No." Or that annoying time when I forgot my favorite t-shirt at an albergue. Hour and a half after I left, realizing that I left it there. What do I do? Walk back to the albergue, or keep going, and just call it a loss?
All those things occupy your mind as they happen. But later on, the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia turned them into something interesting. Something to talk about. Something that adds contrast to an otherwise beautiful experience. And that's a good thing. We need the bad things, or the tiresome things, the annoying things. We need those things to make the beautiful things even better. Because if you want to go on a holiday on a beach, you can do that. If you will be fed, you'll have your cocktails. The sun will be shining, the beds will be made in your hotel. But isn't it also kind of bland?
So yes, I have my expectations about my third Camino. And some of them will be fulfilled, and others will not. And there will be many moments where I think to myself, "Why am I doing this?" It's not like I have to prove to myself that I can walk across a country. I've done it.
And yet, there's something that makes me want to do it again, which is why I'm on this train. On my way to France, to cross the Pyrenees, into Spain. And I gotta tell you: I am excited. I'm really looking forward to this. With the good and the bad, I'm curious to see what happens. I'm also going to try this new format of regular posts from the road. Rough, raw, and barely edited. That might just be the thing I need, because you can labor your videos for days, and make sure everything is just so. But isn't the immediacy of things as they happen? Isn't that the interesting thing? So I'm very curious to find out. And maybe you're curious too. So smash that subscribe button, as they say. Hit that like button if you want.
Anyway, it doesn't matter. I'll see you here, or I won't. I'm on my way.
See you there.
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